In hopes of countering my unlucky birth, I had set myself to work at the village chapel. The chaplain took me in with good humour, for he was old and weary, and in need of a helping hand. He did not believe in my salvation but, he said, where was the harm in trying?

So I collected donations, scrubbed the floors and dusted the altar. Our Earth Goddess Asmara was carved of wood, a work of little delicacy and lesser result. The carver was a travelling craftsman and, when commissioned by our chaplain, he could barely contain his disdain at the lowly price offered. Yet he accepted the task and, from a block of aspen, carved an angular interpretation of the Goddess that was, all in all, far too avant-garde for a village such as this.

It might be because of that odd sculpture that I so clearly remember the beginning of that fateful week.

It was the week leading up to Asmara’s Feast and, to commemorate our devotions in the eyes of the Goddess, we brought her sculpture to stand outside the chapel. The chaplain was behind me, tutting and fretting as I tried to secure it on earth that was still hard from the last struggles of winter.

“Watch it, Gustav, be gentle with Her!” He said. “We should get some ornaments for Her. She looks so plain like this! And the man calls himself an artist - a fraud, I tell you, couldn’t even be bothered to do a little engraving.”

I hummed in acknowledgement and continued trying to settle the sculpture down into the earth. Be gentle, he said! The ground was solid. Where did those flowers find the strength to break through frost? “We could get her some flowers.” I suggested.

The Chaplain clicked his tongue. “Flowers! Like they do in the capital these days, draping the Goddess in any old weeds, dancing down the streets like it’s some playground rendezvous? For shame! Since High Priest Caine ascended, people lost their respect for tradition, I’ll tell you that. Back in the days of High Priest Iupiter, we–” And so he droned on. I had learnt to tune out these rants of his that, at their core, were nothing more than the Chaplain’s misplaced jealousy.

He had gotten drunk one evening and, drawing me close, boasted of how he once kissed the rings of the previous High Priest and how he was, supposedly, praised for his Holy service. He took this praise to heart, hoping that one day the High Priest would call upon him and take him into his inner circle. “The Elder Priests, you know, they don’t go around villages on donkeys and the hems of their robes don’t have a speck of mud on them. Oh, Iupiter liked me, I could see it in his eyes, he would have taken me in, if he just hadn’t died so soon after.”

“How soon?” I had asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, five, six years?” He said, then saw the doubt in my face. “Agh, it takes time you know! I would’ve been there already if this High Priest Caine cared whatsoever for the wishes of his predecessor.”

The Chaplain was delusional, of that I had no doubt. He recited psalms and listened to the routine confessions of dreary peasants and thought his life a waste. Why was he old and crumbling like the tiles of his chapel, when he knew so much and was meant for so much more? That’s what he thought, anyway.

An average man in the face of a relentless destiny, unable to face his own mediocrity, could only blame it on another.

But what about myself?

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“Should be alright now.” I said, having finally secured the sculpture.

“If only it weren’t wooden, we could sanctify it with blood. Just like High Priest Iupiter would do.” He said. “Ah right, Gustav, why don’t you go on and check in with Beata - she’s promised us her cow this year.”

And so I went.

-

It was only a quick matter. Beata showed me the cow, a large creature obliviously munching away at a patch of grass, and assured me that it would be ready for the Feast.

I felt sorry for the beast, and Beata, too. I suspected that she had been made a victim of the Chaplain’s trademark pettiness; a month ago she tripped whilst carrying a bucket of milk, and spilt the contents on the Chaplain’s robes. He grumbled about the incident excessively and, to the discomfort of the whole village, the scent of curdled milk trailed after him for weeks. It was no mystery why he chose Beata to provide this year’s offering.

With those thoughts I made my way back to the chapel. It was a dingy little stone building, its grey exterior a smear upon the otherwise pleasant village landscape. I looked at the sculpture standing in front, its angular forms obscured in the chapel’s shadow, and felt the urge to take it away to a distant field, where it would look imposing and grand atop some grassy hill. Surely this man-made gloom could bring no joy to Asmara, who had birthed soil and water and danced with her sister in the flower field that existed when nothing else did?

Voices drifted over from inside the chapel. I heard the Chaplain’s voice, unmistakably irritated, but the other was unfamiliar to me. It was smooth and masculine, its tone possessing a concentrated calmness and a lilt that was somehow pleasant in its strangeness.

“…from such books I came to wonder, why do you spill blood to honour the Earth Goddess? How do you know it is Asmara you invoke during the Feast? Is blood not–”

The Chaplain interrupted in palpable fury. “Did you come here to spew filthy blasphemy in the face of the Goddess? Your grandfather is a pious man and you dare stand here, thinking yourself to be some lost Woltair Princeling!”

I stepped into the chapel and saw the Chaplain, his pale visage dyed crimson. Standing opposite him with his profile to me was that lion-maned young man whose name I knew by then to be Valdemar.

The Chaplain looked like a rooster with its feathers ruffled as he stared up at Valdemar and waved an admonishing finger in his face. Valdemar, on the other hand, seemed to be almost perfectly at ease, with only the smallest wrinkle between his brows betraying his own vexation.

“I do not doubt or blaspheme. I simply wish to know the answers,” he said, forming his hands into a steeple, “so that my devotion could prosper.”

“Get out!” suddenly demanded the Chaplain, pointing his finger to the door.

“But-”

“Out!”

Valdemar grit hit teeth. He curtsied, an out of place gesture that reddened the Chaplain’s face even more, and turned to leave the chapel.

He flicked his gaze over me, his dark almond eyes like twin eclipses in the dimness of the chapel, and I became promptly aware of myself - of the grass stains on my tunic and the dirt on my shoes and the splinter throbbing in the pad of my thumb.

What I heard had drawn out all my hopes and captured them completely. Here was a man who questioned and doubted, a man who likely did not share the common beliefs that bound the village and turned them against me. A beautiful outsider who would understand me just as I had always wanted.

I sought to catch my reflection in his eyes, to appraise myself and determine if he saw in me even half of what I saw in him.

But he looked away and, just like that, walked past me and out of the chapel. I quickly realised that whilst he was a novelty, to him I was nothing but yet another uneducated villager.

“Chaplain,” I called out, my eyes locked onto Valdemar’s receding figure, “would you allow me to participate in the blood sacrifice?”